this dark thing that sleeps in me
by The Other Girl
Summary: Thanos is evil. It would be easier if he could just be evil at all times. Gamora grows into herself in the shadow of a mad Titan. [Spoilers for Infinity War, but not egregiously.]


When he steals her from her homeworld Thanos asks her question after question.

Some of them are easy. Questions of philosophy where she only has to nod her head 'no' so he can explain it to her.

Questions about the knife he gave her and if she'd ever held one before.

He also asks her what rituals they celebrated on Zen-Whoberi. He asks her when her birthday is and what her mother's name was.

Gamora tells him every detail (between demands to see her mother) and Thanos writes them down.

She scowls at him, which he seems to find hysterical. "Why are you asking that?"

"It's important that someone remembers." She can't imagine ever forgetting and tells him so. "It's possible you're not as brave as I think you are and you'll die with this moment. The longer you live the easier it is to forget where you came from."

"How old are you?" Gamora asks.

"Fifty billion and three quarters," Thanos says. The grin it gives him looks wrong on his face.

"Nu-uh!" she says sternly.

He laughs again. "Alright, little one, only a thousand then."

He's teasing her. She wishes he would just be evil.

* * *

There are many children of Thanos at the stronghold but most of them are not her siblings. They don't want to get attached to some child who will not last a week in their world.

When she manages to survive a month her first sister Aydan gives her a knife and instructs her not to die.

(Gamora knows now that this was as kind as Aydan knew how to be.)

Aydan is a different shade of green than Gamora is but her smile is familiar enough to make her homesick. She tells Gamora what she's done wrong during training instead of expecting her to figure it out on her own. Gamora watches her do backflips through the air and crunch noses with her boot on the way to the ground.

Aydan can do anything. So when Thanos tells Gamora to shoot her sister Gamora is more worried about the rifle itself. Thanos claims that the weapon was made for someone her size but it still feels enormous in her hands. The energy source makes it warm to the touch. Gamora is certain the trigger trembles when she pulls it.

Gamora breaks her wrist when she fires. Aydan could have dodged it easily. She should have dodged it-

Thanos cradles Aydan (Aydan's body, because Gamora _killed_ her and-) in his arms until the last twitches stop.

"You're so strong," he tells her. It sounds like an apology.

Gamora leans against him and cries, hiding her face in his tunic so no one else will see the weakness of it.

* * *

Gamora dreams of her mother but the face is watery and distorted- she can't make out the features. The voice is too far away to hear the words. When she tries to remember how it felt to be held by her the hands are too large.

The next day she tries to stab Thanos when he goes to correct her stance. The knife can't break his skin.

He lifts her up by the neck and bashes her head into the wall. She knows he's giving instructions on how to improve for next time but she can't hear it over the sound of ringing in her ears. She'll need to get cybernetic enhancements to breathe properly again.

Three weeks alone in a room as punishment and Gamora doesn't dream of anything at all.

* * *

She's ten when Nebula is adopted and her first instinct is to cringe at this weeping mess left in her care. How odd, to no longer be the youngest.

"My hair," the girl says, over and over again. She smells like a funeral pyre. "I was on fire and he had to cut off my hair. My hair my hair my-"

"Cry over your family, stupid," Gamora says. "Hair grows back."

Nebula stares at her, lip quivering, her brown eyes wide. "It's too big to cry about."

Gamora kicks her so she'll have something real to be sad over. Nebula does not fight back, not yet, only gives her another of those sad animal faces and follows her further into the compound.

* * *

Once a year Gamora's first knife disappears, only to reappear on a windowsill or on top of her strategy guides. The steel shines like new and the ruby in the middle sparkles.

She's not certain why he bothers.

* * *

"Good job, Nebula," says her father.

Gamora stabs the knife into her sister's shoulder and escapes the chokehold.

"Better job, Gamora," says her father, pleased. Nebula has to get a new shoulder made of wires and gears from the doctor.

Gamora is proud for hours before she remembers to be ashamed. This time when she goes to apologize Nebula bites her hand.

Nebula is learning, It might be safe to love her after all.

* * *

Gamora is thirteen when she first gets to leave the compound. Two of her older siblings flank her like prison guards.

No one explains to her what they are doing on this planet because it is obvious. The smell of it, the dead piled up on one side the panic of the survivors on the other, is palpable before she's even planetside.

There are a few who have been chosen who refuse to die.

Thanos will kill half this planet if she does it or not. If she refuses her elder sibling will make sure she dies with them.

Father would be so disappointed if she failed-

She doesn't know these people. If she kills them with her eyes closed she'll never have to see their faces.

Gamora is very good at killing people. Everyone is very impressed.

"Daughter!" calls Thanos when they return. Gamora moves closer to him but stops herself from bowing.

"I hate your chair," she says. It's safer than what she wants to say.

"It's a throne."

"It's a chair and I hate it."

"You've done very well, little one," he tells her gently. "It gets a little easier every time."

She shudders. "I don't want it to."

Thanos stands and she takes a step back on instinct, putting her arms up, but he pulls her up by the hair and places her down on his chair. "Look," he says. "It suits you now."

She's too small. Her feet dangle over the edge.

"You'll grow into it," he reassures her.

 _I need to leave_ , she thinks wildly. _I need to leave or I'll be like this forever._

She wishes she could stab at him again so this feeling of suffocation would be real enough to fight against.

* * *

When she's seventeen she's sent with another sibling to assassinate a politician on Xandar and forgets to be horrified afterwards. She thinks mostly of how good the food is in the Nova Empire and if Nebula would be willing to practice with the shock collars if she brought her back some or if her last implant meant she couldn't taste anymore.

She goes to look through his files, to make it look like one of his political enemies had done it, and finds picture after picture of his daughter.

The girl couldn't be more than five. In picture after picture her father holds her in his arms and she leaned into him happily. Safe.

Gamora finishes her work but takes the best picture with her. There are so many. No one will notice.

* * *

Escaping Thanos is impossible. But escaping Ronan is horrifically easy.

Thanos is never fool enough to let them go alone into the galaxy. Always his children go in groups of two or three so that they chain each other to him. But Ronan is too focused on his own goals to think about the loyalty of his loaned minions.

She takes a step and no one stops her. She takes another. She manages to walk into her ship without giving herself away in the least.

She meets a fool named Peter who touches her to dance and not to wound. She makes friends.

The Guardians of the Galaxy. It's a far better title than daughter of a mad Titan. Still-

She keeps his knife close to her heart. For when he comes to claim her.

To Thanos freedom is just another joke to tell a favorite child.


End file.
